Pumpkin Spice Cake

Autumn is here! I love this time of year. The leaves are changing, the air is crisp, Sukkot and Thanksgiving are fast approaching. It is most definitely my favorite season… in part, because of pumpkins! I can’t help smiling when I go to the grocery store and see gorgeous orange pumpkins piled high in the produce section. It’s the symbol of the season.

The pumpkin originated in Central America over 7,500 years ago and made its way throughout North America before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Native Americans cultivated pumpkins and prized them as a food source; because of their thick and solid flesh, they could easily be stored throughout the winter. Like other forms of squash, pumpkins are easy to grow. They became a favorite with immigrants to the New World, particularly in New England. Pumpkins were prized for their versatility; they were cooked into pies, stews, tarts, soups, and puddings. The flesh could be boiled or roasted, fried or mashed. Pumpkin seeds were dried and salted as a nutritious snack food. In the early 1800’s, decorative pumpkins called jack-o’-lanterns were carved to celebrate the autumn harvest season. In 1819, Washington Irving featured a jack-o’-lantern in his short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as the “head” of his Headless Horseman character, which likely led to the jack-o’-lantern’s association with the Halloween holiday. In the mid 1800’s, it became stylish to serve pumpkin pies for the Thanksgiving holiday, a trend that continues to this day. As you can see, pumpkins play a large role in American food history.

I love cooking and baking with pumpkin; the flavor is subtly warm and delicious. Pureed pumpkin adds gorgeous color and moisture to baked goods, and a special essence that just feels like fall. When combined with spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves, pumpkin takes on a magical quality.

Case in point, my Pumpkin Spice Cake (or quick bread, if you want to call it that). This delicious loaf cake is one of my favorite harvest-style desserts. When you bake it, your house will smell like autumn. It’s soft, moist, sweet, and delicious. Try topping a warm slice of cake with salted butter for a sweet and salty treat. Serve it with a steaming hot cup of your favorite tea or coffee. Heaven!

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Pour liquid ingredients into dry. Mix together till blended. Do not overmix.

Drain the raisins and pat dry with a paper towel. Fold the raisins and chopped walnuts into the batter.

Grease a medium loaf pan. Pour batter into the pan.

Bake cake at 325 degrees F for about 1 hour, until the edges brown and a toothpick inserted into the thickest section of the cake comes out clean. Remove from oven and let cool in the pan for 15 minutes.

Gently release the cake from the pan and place on a wire cooling rack.

Allow to cool completely before slicing.

Comments

This has become one of my favourite recipes. I’ve baked it a dozen of times already sometimes adding different kind of dried fruit or candied ginger and using different kinds of pumpkin. Make sure to try your pumpkin puree, hokkaido tends to turn out pretty sweet, so you might have to reduce the sugar indicated in the recipe.

This was a hit with family and friends this year for the holidays !!!!! Your recipe made me a superstar because everyone loved it !!! I made it exactly as you wrote it and it was awesome. The fourth time (in one week) that I was baking it , I found that I was out of raisins and walnuts. I didn’t want to go to the store , so I used pecan halves and dehydrated apple slices that I chopped up. I put the apple pieces in a little warm apple cider to rehydrate them. That was a different spin on your recipe that also came out fabulous. Thank you so much for sharing your incredible recipe.

I’m Swedish and live in Stockholm. We do not celebrate Thanksgiving here nor use pumpkin in cooking/baking. But I thought we’d try something for fun and found your recepie from picture googling pumpkin cake and after a few scrolls landed upon this.

this seems like the perfect recipe to make a healthy one. It’s so hard to find Jewish alternatives to the heavy sugary old traditional recipes. What if you replaced the vegetable oil for grape seed oil? And the sugar and brown sugar for applesauce, honey or molasses? And the white flower for whole grain flower? Then pumpkin loaf might actually be a healthy treat. For those looking for a low sugar treat try “the boys” in Boca. They have a killer Mandel bread no sugar added recipe?

Karen good question! I’ve never made this with GF flour but most easy cakes and quick breads like this one do pretty well with all-purpose GF flour substitutes. Please let us know how it works out for you, and what brand you used– it will help other gluten free readers. Thanks!

Living in Israel, I ‘forget’ about Thanksgiving – till I saw this recipe. I was able to find canned U.S. style pumpkin puree, decided to swap the raisins with unsweetened dried cranberries to make it really seasonally appropriate. Yum -give it a try!

When I lived in Israel in the 90’s I could never find pumpkin puree, but I could always find pumpkin chunks in the produce department. I microwaved them till they were soft, then mashed them up and used it cup for cup in recipes. Honestly, it’s not that hard, and it’s tastier than the canned pumpkin!

wonderful recipe! I changed it just a tad, doubled the recipe, used 3 eggs and cut the oil back to 2/3 cup. used half white whole wheat flour, added about 2 T flaxseed meal and 2 T wheat bran. doubled the nuts and the fruit! used dried cranberries and cherries instead of raisins. awesome!!! thank you, I love your recipes

Beautiful Bread, I love all these autumn recipes but i feel like its going by too fast to make them all. It still feels like a little bit of summers hanging on in southern California but its always like that here. I’ll just have to wait till dark to get the real autumn feel. thanks for sharing 🙂